Flight Seven-Fifty-Two
Noah Sparrow
Noah Sparrow is based in Montreal-Tiohtià:ke. His chapbook SPECTACLE/SPECTATOR is out with above/ground press. Another, Here I am Dying at an Average Pace, is forthcoming with Cactus Press. He was a finalist for the 2024 Montreal International Poetry Prize and has a talent for making lemon tarts.
1.
I like to imagine you’ve turned into a heatwave.
In this context, waving will not be
used as a metaphor.
There will be no imagery
of skies nor skin.
The investigation initially described the deaths as “instantaneous”—
my mind inside itself
thought of the cheap coffee I kept in
the back of my cupboard, somewhere.
Only for nineteen seconds after the first missile
the pilots managed to stay on route,
which means it was not an immediate death.
Only you are not coffee. If you were, then
the peppering shrapnel would coat my throat
flavouring my language in a paralysis
further than it has now.
Only there were two missiles in the end,
launched minutes after take-off.
*
“Instantaneous” is a lacking word.
Practice saying it with me. Draw the “I” sound,
and notice how
your tongue will drop
into the racks of your lower teeth,
only to meet up with the “N”
on the top row.
Saying the word is like a minor-travelling.
Open up the word and pretend we live in a world
that’s rife with giving. Notice how
“instantaneous” is a little mouth that has lost all its baby-teeth,
waiting to recover. Waiting
for a hand to guide
where its own body should lie.
*
The mouth is always a site of affirmation.
There is “yes” and there is “no” and there are more
types of clicking vowels
together that I don’t always understand.
My Ontarian birth
has bound my idolatry
towards the Latin-script.
And yet
with every sense of immediacy ignored,
perhaps the mouth has become
too full
or not full enough.
I am not sure what to take out of my mouth
and what to put back in again.
I am hoarding up my own memories
of how to hold my tongue. Sometimes
I like to floss with my righteousness.
Yet
how much grief am I allowed to claim as my own
and carry with me?
There is no market nor emotional regulation
that I know how to follow. This is no
taxed currency.
*
Grief always resides outside of the body.
Distances
defines the body.
When I try to look up quotes about you, the findings are sparse.
Instead
I like to imagine that you have turned into a heatwave
or an responsive expansiveness:
Good words becoming good feet.
I am not sure where to walk.
2.
Say the word “witness”. The mouth
takes back the first half, savours it
for later. Robbing lips. The jaw then
releases, the “ness” reminding me
of swimming salmon. Salted salmon.
Sea, and more sea.
Witness witness witness
my mouth a continuous releasing a snapping like
a paper shredder this word this symptomatic diagnosis as
a mere measure of how
close the body can get
when my eyes are only capable
of subpar
surveillance
and after I’m done saying the word “free”
I close my mouth
with thumbs
because the “ee” sound
leaves my jaw hanging open
and I don’t
want to choke
on the water.
3.
I heard what happened over an intercom.
Voice filtered and
static,
the building’s occupants newly thrusted
onto the stand:
everyone now a
newly-crowned
witness.
A coerced knighthood,
we are wearing our badges:
the shared winters drying
our empty hands.
*
Death is time trapped.
An electrical binding,
yours under
iron hands
iron gloves
oil-plugged teeth.
An instant death for young people
is typically attributed as a problem with
the heart’s electrical signalling.
The body
a piece of technology
My tongue encrypted;
forgive me for my previous
begging in metaphor.
*
A language is only as useful
as the listener’s willingness to hear
A language cannot
hack the body
Let me tell you how
if a system does not change,
the system is considered “timeless”
To say the opposite of “timeless” you would use the word “dated”
Yet you live in both opposites
between these words, swaying through them both
like two ping-pong balls achieving simultaneous wins
an arthritic hand signing a cheque
A language cannot
hack the body
and yet inside
these sleepless nights
and despite
this violent resignation
of bodily concerns,
A thousand ears
will beckon into
your breath, thrust
you into a new kind
of light source,
introduce a new
kind of morning
And judge
For you
where your breaths’
wind will reside
Because the Sun becomes
and is becoming
and stays
*
A sudden death in young athletes is not uncommon.
Maybe the arteries, clogged with cholesterol, eventually
get fed up with a mouth’s aggression and its lining of sugar,
so the arteries decide to throw themselves into the air
make room for their hands
to swear allegiance to—
*
Living in the sky,
there is a separate kind of language.
Mithra
whispers
in your right ear.
Light pours out the left.